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US Was Willing to Start WW3 to defend China in 1969?

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Infohawk

Lifer
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...-planned-nuclear-attack-on-China-in-1969.html

""If China suffers a nuclear attack, they (the Americans) will deem it as the start of the third world war," Dobrynin said. "The Americans have betrayed us."

"The historian claims that Washington saw the USSR as a greater threat than China and wanted a strong China to counter-balance Soviet power. Then US President Richard Nixon was also apparently fearful of the effect of a nuclear war on 250,000 US troops stationed in the Asia-Pacific region and still smarting from a Soviet refusal five years earlier to stage a joint attack on China's nascent nuclear programme."

If this is true then the US wanted a joint strike to deny China nukes but then wouldn't support the USSR five years later? I wonder if US and Russia will ever regret this missed opportunity.

In any case, I think it's ridiculous to think the US would have triggered WW3 to defend communist China.
 
Bluff. A big game of chicken that could have gone horribly awry. It happened all more than once during the course of the cold war.

The Egyptians (and other conspiracy theorists) still claim that, during the 1973 Yom Kippur war, the reason the Egyptian Army, having broken through and now unopposed and rolling, mysteriously stopped dead in it's tracks in the middle of the Sinai was that the US, in the personage of Nixon/Kissinger, panicked and threatened to nuke them.

There are other cogent reasons for that move as well, but try telling that to your average Egyptian!
 
Heh. Or maybe Nixon was bluffing Dobrynin and Kosygin, giving them greater reason to negotiate with the Chinese. He was devious when the need arose, and he was a very good bluffer...

Or maybe it's pure fiction, published for whatever reason the Chinese leadership may have ATM...
 
Perknose said:
Bluff. A big game of chicken that could have gone horribly awry. It happened all more than once during the course of the cold war.

The Egyptians (and other conspiracy theorists) still claim that, during the 1973 Yom Kippur war, the reason the Egyptian Army, having broken through and now unopposed and rolling, mysteriously stopped dead in it's tracks in the middle of the Sinai was that the US, in the personage of Nixon/Kissinger, panicked and threatened to nuke them.

There are other cogent reasons for that move as well, but try telling that to your average Egyptian!
Click to expand...

Never heard that particular yarn but good to know it's out there.
 
Nixon always struck me as paranoid to the point of delusion on foreign policy. This seems to fit in with that.
 
Infohawk said:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...-planned-nuclear-attack-on-China-in-1969.html

""If China suffers a nuclear attack, they (the Americans) will deem it as the start of the third world war," Dobrynin said. "The Americans have betrayed us."

"The historian claims that Washington saw the USSR as a greater threat than China and wanted a strong China to counter-balance Soviet power. Then US President Richard Nixon was also apparently fearful of the effect of a nuclear war on 250,000 US troops stationed in the Asia-Pacific region and still smarting from a Soviet refusal five years earlier to stage a joint attack on China's nascent nuclear programme."

SNIP

In any case, I think it's ridiculous to think the US would have triggered WW3 to defend communist China.
Click to expand...

I thought this was common knowledge. Nixon "opened up" China expressly to balk the Soviet Union's expansion and dominance, and China "opened up" to Nixon specifically to gain an ally to deter the Soviet Union from attacking. It wasn't until the late 80s that the US really got cold feet, and it wasn't until the mid to late 90s that Red China and the Soviet Union became BFF. In fact, China has been much more friendly with Moscow after the collapse than before - which makes sense, as the Soviet Union was much more of a threat to China than is Russia.

As to whether or not the USA would have gone to war against the USSR if it invaded or nuked China, I think it highly likely under Nixon and Regan and highly unlikely under Carter. An insular Communist nation is highly preferable to an expansionist Communist nation, after all. Certainly we thought that a well-armed Red China would be a deterrent to the Soviet Union's expansion if only by tying down so many border troops. I've read summaries of war games pitting the USA and China against the USSR - to what extent those mirror reality and probability, your guess is as good as mine.
 
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